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Gadget fans can't wait to get their hands on Myo, an armband that
controls PowerPoint or Keynote presentations, videogames, toy
drones, music and various software programs through simple hand
gestures. To outsiders, its creator Thalmic Labs seems like the
textbook definition of a successful startup: Y Combinator alum,
30,000 pre-orders secured and $14.5 million raised from investors
– all before its Myo officially launches this September.

But during an exclusive tour of Thalmic Labs' research and
development lab, the company's CEO, Stephen Lake, told
Entrepreneur how his team took very deliberate steps
not to accept any actual money from consumers. He's also
had no qualms tinkering, tweaking and trying to perfect Myo –
even as its delivery to thousands of developers has been delayed
by months. "We could have shipped these," says Lake while holding
up an older model of Myo, "but I guess we're all perfectionists
and we weren't fully satisfied."

Unusual? Certainly. But there's good reason. Here's what your
venture could learn from the team behind Myo, which might just
become that next big thing:

Picture the bigger picture. Ask some individuals
what inspired their invention and they'll start by telling you
about a specific problem they wanted to address – not a category
of products they aimed to sell. For Lake and his two co-founders,
their research into the next evolution of computing found that
wearable devices was set to explode. "But one of the big
challenges that is unsolved is how do you interact with
this next generation of computers all around you?" says Lake.

"People always thought in the future you're going to have these
kinds of interfaces but no one ever really thought about how
you're going to interact with them." He notes that voice- and
camera-based gesture controls don't really work well for the
types of applications his team has in mind, including the use of
smart glasses, heads-up displays and augmented reality (AR)
eyewear. And his team is taking a diversified approach by
pursuing both consumer as well as business applications, having
recently announced on its website that it is working with leading
partners to deploy wearable computing solutions in sectors such
as healthcare, construction and outdoor work. "We wanted a more
subtle interface that would allow you to interact with those
types of devices. That's where we came from."

Leverage unique areas of expertise. Before they
got started in 2012, the trio who launched Thalmic Labs studied
at university together for several years. Matthew Bailey had
studied pattern recognition, which has helped him develop the
underlying machine learning behind Myo, while Aaron Grant focused
on software engineering, an obvious asset today.

Lake, meanwhile, studied hardware, biomechanics and
electromyography tests that analyzed the muscle activation
patterns of athletes. "We made the connection: If we can detect
these muscle activation signals, couldn't we then use them to
interpret the motions you're making in gestures?" says Lake.
"That was the basis for how Myo works today then we spent six
months building out early prototypes to prove that was actually
possible."

Go against conventional wisdom. To secure its
30,000 pre-orders, for which consumers have been paying $149 once
they've actually received the product, Thalmic Labs created a
campaign on its own website – and deliberately avoided launching
one on crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter or Indiegogo. "One of
the reasons we chose not to take money up front was so that we
had some flexibility in saying the bar for us in shipping these
is [based on] quality and our own standards," says Lake.
"Pre-orders can be an early, positive way to go because it gives
you more flexibility – you're not taking people's money hostage
if you're not sure when it will ship [or getting] negative PR
that way."

Consider an approach. Then reconsider it.
Originally, Thalmic Labs considered 20 to 25 hand gestures but
discovered in early tests that people didn't want to learn that
many. (Today there are five core gestures, including moving the
hand side to side and opening or closing a fist.) The company
also planned to ship thousands of alpha units this past December
to developers but then selected just 1,000 applicants, who have
become a small feedback group to help Thalmic's programmers
improve their algorithms.

At the same time, employees have been upgrading Myo's design. The
issues? For starters, it was too thick: "We certainly wanted
something that was the thickness of an iPhone, or thinner, so you
could fit it under your sleeve so it's not obtrusive. This," Lake
adds, holding up a chunkier model that was about twice as thick,
"is just not the aesthetics we wanted to deliver in the end."

The old Myo also featured separate plastic parts that Lake
worried could easily break, while the latest is molded in one
piece, fits a wider array of arm sizes and includes a more rugged
design. It came at a cost, however: a different manufacturing
process. (Those who didn't pre-order Myo for $149 will now have
to pay $199.)

Plan the next move. At the end of the day Myo is
just a single device. While Lake won't discuss whether he has
plans to develop a broader suite of gadgets, he says he's focused
on making sure Myo becomes compatible with different programs
beyond those that are easiest for consumers to visualize at
launch. Hence the push into using it as a touch-free, voice-free
way to control enterprise applications, including those on Google
Glass, Recon Jet and Epson Moverio.

"One of the challenges we have is how do you explain to the
consumer what this is? You don't walk into a Best Buy saying, 'I
want a gesture-controlled armband,' so we've tried to find a good
comparison: When the iPad was first launched, Apple was good at
showing you specific things it could be used for – even if
they're not the things that, long-term, you might be most
interested in. But you understood how it worked."